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Russian physicist Nikolai Basov won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1964. Basov’s research led to the development of the maser and the laser.

Nikolai Gennadiyevich Basov (1922-2001), Soviet physicist and Nobel Laureate. Basov helped to develop both the laser and the maser, for which he shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics with Soviet physicist Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov and American physicist Charles Hard Townes.

Born in Novaya Usman’, Russia, Basov graduated from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute in 1950 with a degree equivalent to an M.S. degree in physics. He obtained a Ph.D. degree from the Lebedev Institute of Physics at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1956. In 1953 he became a researcher at the Lebedev Institute. Basov took on various directorial duties at the in 1958, and became head of the institute in 1973.

Basov, together with his teacher Prokhorov, conducted groundbreaking research in quantum mechanics, which concerns the behavior of atoms at different energy levels(see Quantum Theory). They first deduced that quantum mechanics permits the amplification of microwaves and light waves (see Electromagnetic Radiation) by inducing atoms to release energy. This helped them construct the theoretical basis of the process now called microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, or, more commonly, maser. The maser quickly found many applications for its ability to send strong microwaves in any direction and resulted in improvements in radar. The maser also provided the basis for an atomic clock (see Clocks and Watches) that was far more accurate than any mechanical timepiece ever invented. Basov later helped develop the visible-light maser, or laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), which delivers infrared or visible light instead of microwaves. Both the maser and the laser can collect and amplify energy waves hundreds of times. They can also produce a beam with almost perfectly parallel light waves and little or no interference or static.